No Good Men: A Villain's Tale

By scarlett o'malley

Noel can see death. He can both bring and dissuade death. And he has earned his title—the Death Knell—one of London's most perilous villains.

In the year 1866, during the Battle of Bezzecca in the Third Italian War for Independence, Noel departs upon a mission for creatures who think little of his life. But he finds he can do nothing but watch, waiting for his own demise. Left with no direction, he thinks to vanish into the comforts of the dark.

In a most peculiar turn of events, he succumbs to the pressures of an unlikely influence to begin a new life. Restored of purpose, he discovers a time of relative peace; he explores it, he learns what the growing Kingdom of Italy has to offer him.

For nearly two decades, Noel watches over the de Fiore family. But behind the family's constant and hidden agenda and secretive, sub rosa pacts of an old and deadly history, Noel is forced away yet again, and retreats back to his birthplace of London.

Through a series of mishaps, challenges, and unlikely alliances, Noel finds himself drawn into the roles of guardian, friend, enemy, and ultimately, the lance before powerful forces of the dark, forces seeking to rule not only the world of darkness but also the world of light.

Noel must face a tortured past and armor that will, in time, fail him. He must find the being he was meant to be, face the demons which haunt him, and reclaim his humanity before he is dragged down into an abyss of eternal darkness—bringing all of London with him.

"No Good Men: A Villain's Tale" is a dark, twisting tale that puts the antagonist front and center, asking the real question: What does it truly mean to be a villain?

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jun 4, 2021
• ISBN: 9781098384418

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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

ISBN: 9781098384418

To my dear brothers and sisters, to my dear friend of Tianjin

Thank you for all the encouragement and push over the years.

To the kind young lady who did her best to point me in the right direction

Thank you.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI

Chapter VII

Chapter VIII

Chapter IX

Chapter X

Chapter XI

Chapter XII

Chapter XIII

Chapter XIV

Chapter XV

Chapter XVI

Chapter XVII

Chapter XVIII

Chapter XIX

Chapter XX

Chapter XXI

Chapter XXII

Chapter XXIII

Chapter XXIV

Chapter XXV

Chapter XXVI

Chapter XXVII

Chapter XXVIII

Chapter XXIX

Chapter XXX

Chapter XXXI

Chapter XXXII

Chapter XXXIII

Chapter XXXIV

Chapter XXXV

Chapter XXXVI

Chapter XXXVII

Chapter XXXVIII

Chapter XXXIX

Chapter XL

Chapter XLI

Chapter XLII

Chapter XLIII

Chapter XLIV

Chapter XLV

Chapter XLVI

Chapter XLVII

Chapter XLVIII

Chapter XLIX

Chapter L

Chapter LI

Chapter LII

Chapter LIII

Chapter LIV

Chapter LV

Chapter LVI

Chapter LVII

Chapter LVIII

Chapter LIX

Chapter LX

Chapter LXI

The Offense

Prologue

Muted screams, the shrieks of a person who might have sought to contain some immeasurable pain within the clamping of their jaws and the grinding of their teeth, ripped through the black of the deepest darkness. Their recurrence, but growing louder and louder with each utterance, set the dark aflame. And like a match set to a thousand barrels of creosote, the empty world of infinite black exploded into one of blinding light. A sea of incessant and searing blazes, all-consuming and unforgiving, countless waves of fire cut off every direction of sight and hid from view all evidence of from whom or from whence the screams might have come. Yet, regardless of what could or could not be seen, nothing covered or distorted the growing hint of familiarity, the sudden recognition of to whom those blood-curdling screams belonged—they belonged to someone being burned alive—they belonged to Clare.

Noel screamed to her. Giving no regard to the scorching pain about his own body or the burning smell of flesh threatening to suffocate him, he rushed into the endless flames. His movements arrested almost immediately, he felt his arms nearly torn from their sockets. Unable to see his restraints, unable to release himself from them, he raged against them, raged against the mockery they made of his strength. Again, and again, he screamed into the fire, yelled for Clare. Beneath the descending avalanche of hopelessness, he demanded more of his body, he demanded the strength to set himself free. But as if punished for his weakness, punished for so feeble of efforts by some invisible and violent force, he found himself pummelled and forced away from any sort of advancement. He returned pure rage as his answer. But as every scream grew together into one maddening noise, as every flame burned together as one great fire, as every bit of violence flowed without restraint, he found himself beaten back, battered down, and crushed underfoot, again, and again, again, and again—and again—and again. She had to be found, she had to be saved; he raged on.

Time yet gave no indication of its presence, though the pains of Hell had somewhat given way to the pains of mortals. Pushed to a distance, the screams no longer grew to such a deafening din. Pressed upon by darkness, the unending flames settled to a simmer. Somewhere nearer to home, amidst the throb of aching muscles and bones, the pain of deprivation, the internal burning of thirst and hunger, made its mark, a laughable touch of the living world about the abyss, about the pit of an eternal hell. Yet as those things placated and set to a distance threatened their return, the pain of those mortal necessities unfulfilled warned of a merciful death should any further stresses be added.

Before the futile struggle towards that death, instability gave way to complete and utter fatigue, the grip of madness to sheer exhaustion. The fires of Hell lessened to the fires of mortal want. And therein, the darkness of an impenetrable veil separated just enough into varying degrees of black to reveal a presence, a dark thing made of a cold biting as the scorching flames of fire. With smouldering eyes, it smiled its teeth as the Devil. Beneath a dark and ragged hood and cloak, it waited as the Devil.

‘Wh—where is she?’

‘Have you ever heard of purgatory, my son? Some believe it is where they will go when they die to first expiate their sins before they are allowed to enter Heaven,’ the cold presence rasped, his grin wide as ever, his tone near to a laugh.

Stealing from the dying embers of his own fire, scratching and clawing, Noel inched towards his visitor. He stopped at their feet.

‘I will tear this place down upon your head and I will kill you!’ ‘Where is she?’

‘She is where you left her—dead.’

Again taking from what he knew to be the last of his life, Noel twisted his antagonist’s legs from beneath them, and felt the strong chords of throat muscles descend to his other hand. Into those muscles, he dug his nails but found only the reward of laughter and some powerful striking force of incapacitation.

‘Raging near to three weeks without so much as a nap, starved of every necessity, and still, he might have killed you, old man,’ another spoke to the first.

It made no impact, the grating and increasingly distant laughter they again shared. Their words, their sounds had all begun to run together to be sucked into a growing void of dark and stillness. Their forms merged more and more with the darkness deepening about them.

‘What—do you—want?’

‘What do you want, my dear Death Knell? And more importantly, what will you give to have it?’

Chapter I

Winter

Short of gales and gusts but more than mere whispers, winds wailed and moaned every which way, wailed and moaned as if they hid, within their discordance, some sad secret. Darkness hung heavy over a great expanse of the darker shades of grey, and shadows lingered all about as if they too had something to hide. Lacking the cold which would have all but solidified the season, snow, swirling flurries of white and grey, filled the air, lay thick upon the ground, and environed every tree of great forests. Stretching unto every direction, tall mountains made deep, a wide valley of a still river and its streams. Silence rose intermittently in between and about the surges of air as if it too sat atop some restless yet hidden confidence.

From a distance, what sounded like one—two sets of footsteps, they similarly weighted, grew louder and nearer to the point of deafening. A key scratched inside a lock, released it. A bolt hissed its disengagement from serving as a second device of security. A heavy door upon oiled hinges then rasped its way open.

A sharp chill crept over and invaded the neutral conditions of the wintry world. In its wake, another thermic disturbance, like the clashing of fire and ice, followed.

Before a tall form cloaked and hooded so as to hide their every feature, the elements of winter dissolved into the growing majority of blackness, leaving naught but the various depths of grey behind to make more of the room forming about the visitors.

Books upon books, a single desk and chair, chains, a bed; the place looked as some manner of confinement, though more than a simple prison cell.

‘Who are you?’ the hooded figure asked, his voice low.

Through sudden flashes of violence and instances of the same nature, a name came forth as it had been bidden.

‘Noel—Noel, the Death Knell.’

‘Who am I?’

Through more flashes but brought forth more as a file from a library, the faceless figure gained the features of a hard countenance, one twisted and creased with a most fiendish grin.

‘Benedict—Benedictus the Black Abbot; the last monk of Glastonbury, a general and strategist once of Her Majesty’s Army, Protector of the Poor, Undervalued, and Excluded of the Industrial Revolution—the devil the Devil himself will fear.’

A grin more vehement than that which had faded away spread beneath the rising head of the abbot.

‘And what is our purpose?’

The information came smoother, faster.

‘To bear the burden of the greater good.’

His grin broadening still further, the abbot looked to his shoulder.

‘No doubt you’ll have some explaining to do; however, your service here has been indispensable.’

‘And what of him? You believe your mesmeric command, your armour, will hold?’ the hidden visitor murmured.

‘Worried, are you?’

‘I do wonder how you might manage without your shield.’

‘As grateful as I am for your services, my dear, I cannot hold my most useful weapon here forever. There is work yet to be done. In the end, like the rest of us, he will have to come to grips with his past, with himself. But I rather think with the defences I’ve forged into place, we shan’t lose him anytime soon. Thus, should I keep you here no longer.’

‘Very well then, sir. I’ll take my leave.’

Swathed in an impenetrable black, with a bow, the second visitor retreated back through the doorway, taking with them their unusual presence.

‘You know,’ the abbot started again; ‘as a woman, one of a carefully miseducated species, so often it seems you and those of your kind should only gain any significance in life if elevated to such by a man taken in fancy.’

The second visitor stopped about the hall.

‘Yet,’ the abbot continued; ‘despite frequent confinement to hardly more than a pleaser to men, women are most capable beings, their minds and hands, just as yours, as capable as any man’s. And beneath society’s poor perception of them, their faculties ever underestimated, women have gained a most profound understanding of the opposite sex whilst they themselves remain beneath a shroud. Consequently, that comprehension of men then worked into business endeavours, matrimony, manipulation—entrapment, they appear less devious and more so well within their right as sufferers of constant bias and repression, they perhaps more intelligent, more capable, they having been forced to work within such confines.’

A low and grating laugh rippled into the room.

‘You certainly have a way with words, abbot, they most persuasive; you much like my father save for one significant difference.’

‘Which is?’

‘He knows I am no woman.’

The abbot turned partway and looked after the other in their departure.

‘Shame.’

‘Well then, I trust you understand what I have tried to do, what I have sought to accomplish?

Noel looked at the shackles clamped about his wrists and followed the chains to their anchorings at the sides of his bed. He saw the wall behind him scored deep with countless parallel grooves like the claw marks of some mad beast; he saw a bent metal plate of similar anchorings as his bed, it nearly torn from the same wall. He stared again to his chains, he stared back to the abbot.

‘You seek to protect some thing or someone.’

‘You,’ the hooded man returned; ‘from yourself, from the abyss that will, in time, again haunt you.’ ‘But until then….’

Another key released the shackles.

‘There is work to be done.’

A peculiar sensation, one of severe stillness, came with the words the abbot uttered.

Giving no thought to the paler skin of his wrists, Noel stood to his feet and met the dark yet fiery eyes raised to his own.

‘Instructions,’ he returned, sensing the words fairly spoken for him.

‘With the loss of half of our institutions and living quarters, I suppose it would be prudent that with your ever-watchful eye you might oversee the rebuilding. However, with the flesh and veins of our enemies still fairly exposed in defeat, I would have your ears glean any information we might use against them in the future and your hands claim some bit of restitution, should it be readily available, for our losses. With a number of their own establishments made to cinders, the cost of rebuilding will need supplement. And today being Black Monday, see if you might follow any of the damaged limbs of the beast, Dorsett, Wentworth, Flower and Dean, Devil’s Consort, etc. before they are sealed or cut off entirely like those puppets about Parliament.’

A surge of deep shadows darkened the black room, with visible-like records displaying the aforementioned, each location no different than the other. Shadows made of rotted structures and corroded human forms, where the darkest of it all, grinning beings with no faces, stood silent as masters over the entire spectacle of decay.

‘Direction, details, and all relevant information are yet available to you?’

Over a dark map, the locations spread out along Commercial Street and their number grew to include other places as Ole Nic and St. Giles. Trails littered with glistening coins flowed from the slums and gathered in various collection points, but there the trails disappeared behind the grinning yet faceless beings, they floating about dark pits like phantoms.

‘Yes,’ Noel answered. ‘Limitations?’

‘Being a mission of such broad strokes, I leave all means to your discretion. I suspect you will only find more empty names to add to the two houses of phantoms which hold so much property about the East End slums, along with more puppet vicars and lowly vampyres. But we might at least leave our enemies with a clear understanding of what it means to threaten me and our work for man and Master. However, should you gain any lead to those benefactors of the lower ranks, you will proceed with the utmost covertness to ascertain their identities or whereabouts.’

‘Acknowledged.’

Two dagger-like blades of wavy blackened steel, no cross guard, and so thin as to be nearly imperceptible were slipped from the abbot’s dark folds. They fit neatly to matching sheathes at the inside of a black coat.

‘And the—woman who left here moments ago and is surely yet waiting nearby, do treat her as an ally—for now.’

Chapter II

Creaturs of the Night

The course unto Wentworth and beyond lay in plain sight, a line drawn upon that map rendered forth by the Black Abbot, a course set as a train to rail. A thin veil of grey stripped away the colour from the dying light of the sun and the street lamps lit as poor replacements. The fall of evening stretched and connected the shadows growing about London, shadows aiding in the shift towards night. The low temperature of the hour and season hastened the steps of those the air enveloped, the increasing chill driving them to ground and herding them about any bit of warmth like sheep. Soon hardly a soul stirred or moved about the streets; and darkness covered everything.

At either side of Commercial Street, rising as a wall of black against which the scant display of weak lamps made no effect, the common lodging-houses of Wentworth stood as if they should belong with the buildings that came before them. But as the night brightened and each surface about the area became distinguishable in its own shade of black, from foundation to roof, the poor quality of each building showed almost as clearly as if beneath the light of day. And along with the crumbling of inferior materials and shoddy craftsmanship, the raw and decomposing smell of poor sanitation rose about the air as a further attestation to the deplorable conditions attributed to Wentworth and the other streets. Amidst both stench and dilapidation, were they some manner of cover, the cold of greed and avarice yet marked the creaturs who would feed off of those forced to live in such conditions, just as it marked through a maze of dim and damp passageways, their better-made shelter hiding in the surrounding decay.

Minions travelled the narrow way in pairs; and each pair heading inside carried a collection case. Traversing a course which sat above ground, sunk below it, and carried on at times with or without cover, they walked with the stir of some nervous energy; and though they moved with a wary eye about them, they overlooked translating their caution into the muting of their footsteps.

With the rising temperature of the air, the low light of candles gave way to brighter rays of light spilling from every side of a door. Before it, the passageway widened into something like a foyer where dark corners abounded. Aft of it, the light from a fire at one side shone over others to be joined by the admitted pair.

Noel touched at the wood of the door; it felt as damp as all else in spite of the fire. Removing one blade from his coat, he eased it in a circle at the side of the door.

Apart from the two couriers, three creaturs resided about the room, they each dressed as gentlemen with one in particular, he exuding all the coolness of more than a mere underling. Giving the appearance of boredom, he deliberate and listless in his jabbing at the burning wood, the one aloof sat tending to the fire with a gold-tipped cane; while at his back, the second sat before a short table sorting a small pile of coins beneath the watchful eye of the third. A giant of a creatur compared to the small and average size of his associates, he stood crowded in the room, occupying nearly a third of the space by himself. Together, with the last contribution placed before them, both he and the accountant each hardened the frowns of their faces to outright glowering towards the trembling forms of their visitors.

Dull and dirty shillings and pennies, their count hardly warranting the use of a collection case, jingled for but a moment atop more coins of the like. The accountant opened his mouth, but the keeper of the fire cut off any words.

‘Permit me to spare you two gentlemen any further undue difficulties: you may go,’ he asserted in a voice of unusual gentleness, waving the couriers off without so much as a glance their way.

Along with looks of unease, two nods and two voices giving thanks went the way of the keeper of the fire; as, at second glance, along with his tone of command, the cut and quality of his clothes elevated him a little further up in the hierarchy of villains. His body short of any temperature hot or cold lifted him further still.

‘With the damage done from Dorset up through to Old Nic, we were promised enough tenants to cover thrice over those who we lost to the Black Abbot,’ the accountant bit out, rising from his seat.

The firekeeper looked to his shoulder and smiled.

‘Patience, my dear,’ he consoled. ‘The Black Abbot has a fair amount of support at present. From Parliament to rich private benefactors, he has gained much in strength and power. Thus, have the estates of Watkin and Ghoolly decided to let this nuisance, this passing bit of trouble, have his way for now and use those taken by the violence and schemes to measure the capability and capacity of this usurper’s reach, use them to discover his supporters—use them to dig his own grave.’

Slowly, the hard faces of his audience softened at the mouth, their frowns turning to something of smirking grins.

As if sensing that change in demeanour, the firekeeper turned back to his task.

‘I am pleased you approve,’ he continued. ‘All have suffered of late, particularly with last year’s scarlet fever epidemic. So, in going forward, the estates would like to make certain those in our line of work start our recovery by dealing with the common enemy as opposed to any differences we may have between ourselves.’

‘Indeed,’ the accountant replied; ‘but I must say it seems rather odd that such a well-placed individual should be made to deliver this news to lesser persons as we are.’

Offering a view of longer than average incisors, a grin and guttural laugh accompanied the firekeeper as he rose to his feet. He held a hand of long and slender fingers topped with sharp nails before him and stared to it.

‘It is no secret we are of a cold and particular nature. But there are some few monsters who can stir chills even in creaturs as us, those who would seek out trails in the rubble and confusion, those who would yet seek to destroy us and those we serve.’

He pointed his cane at the door.

‘My dear sir, if you please.’

Noel stepped deeper into the shadows. Watching the big creatur search about, he found the enforcement of the abbot’s orders a higher priority than any trouble that might be suffered or avoided. Angling his body back towards the passageway, he stepped into the light of the doorway.

‘Ahhhh,’ the firekeeper greeted; ‘I do not believe I have had the pleasure, sir.

Noel turned his head just enough to eye the other through his hair.

‘Irrelevant,’ he returned.

‘How unfortunate that manners were not made a part of your regimen.’

Hearing the guard make his bellow but a confirmation of his heavy-footed rush, Noel ducked from the arms set to grab him. And with a foot to the other’s rear, he re-directed the hurtling mass straight towards the frowning agent of the estates. He dashed into the cover of the stumbling guard, drawing a blade and waiting for the agent’s escape. He caught the cane thrust at him and sent his own blade at the wrist holding the other’s weapon; the grinding of one steel edge against the other sent sparks over the floor.

‘So young to be so perilous,’ the gentlemanly agent commented; ‘fortunately, at least for tonight, I seem to have been favoured by your incomplete development. Were your arms any longer, you might have bled me dry.’

He chuckled.

‘Truly, your years can number no more than fourteen or fifteen.’

Keeping his face from the fire, Noel again stared through the screen of his hair.

‘Of course,’ the agent replied with a sigh; ‘the abbot did not send you here to negotiate.’

‘I was sent here to deliver a message.’

‘As was I,’ the agent returned, holding his thin sword about his shoulder with a smile. ‘And as I am sure we both understand one another, I think we might part with no further trouble on this night.’

Noel started to replace his blade; he held it just short of its sheath.

‘There is one other matter.’

The agent looked himself over, looked to the gold handle of the cane sword he gripped with gold-ringed fingers. Glancing to his own coat pocket, he held it open and showed a leather fold bursting with notes. With the same ease, he parried both the thrust of his own scabbard and the slash of the blade sent against him. He showed a ferocious strength in a slashing counterattack and snake-like quickness in his own patient thrusts. Before two smirking faces, he made effortless his defence. Appearing to enjoy the pressure sustained against his sword, the clash held at a standstill, sword against scabbard, he bared his teeth to their roots. But the leather fold held before his face, he soon abandoned his grin as he did his self-control, growing more and more agitated in seeing his suit and skin pierced through and slashed in half a dozen places. Forced to use his sword as a crutch, he smiled at the taste of his own blood, rushed into the blade held against him, and used his teeth to score where his blade could not. Torn away, he fell to his knees but yet managed a laugh.

Noel touched at the blood trickling from his neck, noted the feeling of numbness and paralysis running out from the wound. He felt his movements slow, felt the fight within himself dying down. He fought to focus his eyes on the creatur returned to its toothy grin and the great guard who came with him. He found he could offer little resistance to the fist that smashed his jaw and the wall he broke with his back; but in the muted pain, he found a spark. Deeply, he inhaled at its sensation and felt as though a gateway had been opened to some surge of energy. But where the flames of a fire might have come, he felt a stilling cold flow about his body, it releasing him from the hold placed about him and yet acting as a fire with a violent and near voltaic charge. Clarity and strength restored, he returned his attention to his opponents; he found both his and their way blocked by a being wrapped from head to toe in black.

They spoke not a word but cast aside the guard with such force as to create yet another hole in the wall of the room. The creature of black started for the grinning other, the sword they caught dimming the once smiling expression, the blade they broke removing it entirely. Like a knight in full armour, they stood against the lightning-quick attacks of claw and tooth as if awaiting the moment their prey might make a mistake. And they too at last bitten savagely about the neck, they merely laughed, a low and dangerous laugh. With a grip about their prey’s throat so tight it appeared to force open the biting jaws, they administered a blow that created yet another hole in the small and crumbling room. The guard rose again as if to avenge the agent. The creature of black, as if tapping into their own raging fire, made plain the dull sound of broken bones in their dispatching of the larger man.

‘I am sure you didn’t need my help,’ the Black Abbot’s former assistant stated, tossing the dropped leather fold back over her shoulder; ‘however, I was feeling a little left out.’

She rummaged about the pockets and body of the two beaten creaturs, taking away jewellery and a few pounds more atop the coins removed from the table.

‘You don’t mind, do you?’ she enquired without turning from the last victim huddled away in a corner.

‘By all means.’

The accountant offered what little he possessed—it did not save him from a similar fate as his companions.

‘Was there something I missed?’ Noel asked.

‘Complaining again already?’

Noel simply stared to the dark slits of a glance given him.

‘Seems the Black Abbot carried out a right proper job on you, mate. But the night is yet young, and I believe we’ll soon see whether or not he has provided the means for you to fix that great gaping hole in you.’

‘Was there something I missed?’

The dark creature laughed low.

‘Well I suppose you’ll get it in time. And to answer your question: yes, someone did take notice of your presence.’

‘To what effect?’

‘Two couriers started north, one destination to be Flower and Dean and the other on further towards Dorsett and Devil’s Consort. Your lack of cooperation was to be the topic of these messages.’

‘You must have been most persuasive.’

‘O most,’ the dark creature hissed, curling the fingers of one gloved hand before her face.

Noel counted half the contents free of the agent’s leather fold. He held them to his ally, he watched a hesitant hand collect them.

‘With the suggestion, you might return the rent. Those who already suffer here might suffer more.’

‘As my father would say: there are those who must help themselves, those who must learn to suffer in the right direction, suffer for something more than themselves.’

Looking away, she held the notes aloft.

‘I suppose you’ll be wanting these back now?’

‘It was only a suggestion. Moreover, I believe your presence one to make the night possibly more successful than were you not here.’

‘Quite the change of pace, that,’ the dark creature replied with a rasping laugh, tucking the money away.

She held a hand forth.

‘Lead on then, good sir.’

Again beneath a thin veil of grey, about the rest of the places which sat along the abbot’s pre-arranged course, the hushed voices of those who needed little of light spoke of the same: the destruction of their masters’ properties, the resulting loss of tenants, the bothersome price of bribes to rebuild at the lowest possible cost, the overall loss of revenue, who would be held responsible, and the infernal nuisance the Black Abbot had become. With words of scorn and mockery, some hands counted from personal accounts what might be spared towards the effort of restoring that which was lost. Amidst feeble moaning of self-pity and cries of despair, other hands grasped and shook one another over the empty space of where money failed to appear before them. Behind words of ire and threat, still more hands cracked knuckles and sharpened fists in preparation that less fortunate creatures might be made to bear the burden of paying for any losses. But in the end, the voices that growled and snarled protest over the loss of still more, along with the voices that laughed at the warning of taking punitive measures against already starving creatures, all shrunk to sound more like the whimpering of those who recognised they had fallen short in their duties one too many times.

A similar chorus, from one street to the next, together those voices hung about the air as the weeping of those souls seized by the Devil. For indeed, a devil had gone amongst them, a most violent and harmful creature of that tepid yet stormy nature. An unsteady balance of a harsh warmth set against a forceful cold, she delivered fear, torturous pain, and irreparable damage warranting the cries uttered by her victims. Yet, for all her ferocity, her malicious manner, and the stealth that went before and after her, no voice provided any information concerning the ruling parties and primary beneficiaries of the slums.

From those hushed lips and tightly clenched jaws, the quiet of the night grew deeper, like that of the visitation of Death, towards the lane where the Black Abbot first started his business, towards a lane that had suffered far worse than the slums before it. Burned almost completely flat at both sides, faint wisps of smoke yet appeared to rise from the few frames left standing over the ashes of Wheler Street. Occupied by only a persistent few picking through the charred remains, the widened way made clearer the view from the Devil’s Consort’s position about the topside of Commercial Street to her faithful opposite just beyond the other end. It stood plainly as the quickest route to continuing the abbot’s business, but the abbot’s pre-arranged course showed Ole Nic to be reached by way of Shoreditch. And like some warning against any alteration, a soft and low rumbling, the sound of very distant thunder seemed to emanate from the scene of deathly quiet, a muted disturbance in turn affecting barely perceptible ripples in the darkness about the barren space. A chill too began to creep from the open way, bringing with it shades of black that drifted into the form of those places that had been destroyed.

‘Well, well,’ spoke a voice from the nearby shadows, heavy of an Irish accent. ‘I didn’t believe Birdie when he said you’d come back, but I’d know that mongrel of face anywhere.’

‘Listen, Red,’ another voice returned as two better-than-average young men stepped away from the ruins; ‘I haven’t stayed with you all this time to see you just throw your life away in so careless of a fashion.’ ‘We all lost someone dear in this war, mate.’

‘Red,’ Noel echoed; ‘Red Capper?’

Alongside known associates, Birdie James, Dutch Regent, and Gully St. Marie, records marked the name as someone who was an ally. The grey darkening their wild hair and the long single braid of their partner, it painted them of no particular significance concerning matters at hand.

Noel turned to his dark-clad companion.

‘Lost someone?’ he enquired in spite of the rumbling that had returned.

‘It’s probably best if you steer clear of—.’

‘What’s this?’ Red interrupted, stepping closer; ‘you mean to say, in but a few months’ time this spotted cur has forgotten us, forgotten my—!’

‘Calm down, Red,’ the other urged, restraining his partner.

‘Forgotten my sister Clare, forgotten all those he led to their destruction!’

The low thunder grew to an outright battering led by some unseen forces. A deep cold cut away much of the sharpness of the pain, but the sheer violence of the surge slowed every movement and threatened to overwhelm every sense.

The sudden descent of silence aided quickly the restoring of order.

Noel found himself on his knees, breathing heavily, and his fingers dug into the street. Nearby, rubbing his jaw and also about the ground, he saw Red Capper, the other glaring with both eyes and spirit alight and ignoring the dark figure standing over him. Sensing uncertainty about his legs, Noel accepted assistance to his feet.

‘You’ll have to forgive ole Red. It’s been a bit difficult for him to find his sister and then lose her again, not to mention others he considered no less than family to boot.’

‘Birdie? Birdie James?’

‘Aye, that’s it, mate.’ Birdie answered; ‘though, if I had to guess, I would say there is one this war has affected far more than anyone else.’

‘So it would seem,’ Noel commented, looking over his hands, touching about his head.

He looked to his guardian.

‘I do not believe your presence here tonight to be a mere whim.’

The woman shrugged.

‘Someone had to make certain you could once more stand on your own two feet.’

Noel peered to his pale wrists.

‘Have I been so troublesome?’

The woman made her laugh low and dark.

‘Let’s just say that you have been re-made in a manner that you might be less troublesome to yourself, amongst others.’

‘Though, I dare say, Red has provided you with at least a few memories to stay away from for a while,’ Birdie added.

‘And why should he be afforded such a luxury?’ Red bit out.

He stiffened at being snatched from the ground and forced to look into the woman’s dark eyes.

‘Whine if you must, Red Capper, moan that your losses have been so much greater than others. Just remember one thing, you’re alive and well; and were it not for him, were it not for her, none of us would have a thing to complain over since—.’

‘Right. No thanks to you of course, my dear.’ ‘I might be a little, the self-serving sort; but still a far cry from the back-stabbing sort, I’d say.’

Red’s words earned him the silence of his antagonist and she discharged him with enough force to send him reeling into a nearby wall. For a moment, she stood, head bowed in looking towards Wheler Street. She then straightened and started in the direction of Shoreditch.

‘Go on then you callous cowards, you unfeeling curs! But remember this, for all your fine works, no one will miss you, no one will care you’re gone!’

Noel paused and glanced back to the man of wild hair.

‘Why should it matter?’

As if to signify the importance of the place, the pale grey stealing away the colour cast about by the street lamps faded from the rising tower and walls of St. Michael Bassishaw. From the indifference of previous shades, the great vault-like structure settled more into its natural state of growing disrepair. The interior followed suit, but the persistent silence could not be overlooked. For all the church’s discoloured walls, from which dust encroached upon bowed and failing pews, a look near akin to some strange cemetery or mausoleum, those haunting elements appeared to emit a sort of calm. A calm that only increased with the utter darkness swathed about the abbot’s hall, a calm which did not see the same interruption that the many candles of the abbot’s outer chamber brought to that darkness.

‘Report.’

‘Little in the way of information. But it seems a truce is so greatly desired that they are willing to pay handsomely for it.’

‘Indeed. And such made for quite a lucrative night,’ the dark-clad woman added.

Noel set all that he had gathered to the small square table adorned with a single candle standing at the centre of the room. He noted blood at the back of one of his hands, traced it back to the source at his neck. He eased his head to one side, permitting the gloved hands of his ally to better inspect the wound.

‘Looks like he just reopened the wounds a little. Nothing a short rest and some pressure won’t solve.’

‘Burn them closed.’

‘I hardly think—.’

‘I said burn them.’

‘As you wish.’

The woman took the blade offered to her and set it to the candle at the centre table.

‘Any trouble?’

‘He appears to be a little slow in remembering all that he is supposed to remember. And it was plain, certain triggers like names, places, and likely similar situations can still reach out, rather forcefully, to what you placed behind your walls of the mind.’

‘Noel?’

‘I did not expect and was therefore unprepared for so powerful of an attack. Adjustments will be made.’

He felt his muscles give a slight twitch beneath the burning touch of heated metal.

‘What we do will never be of the popular sort; and London will spare no effort in exploiting even the smallest of weaknesses.’ ‘During your rehabilitation, I made promises to deliver on a good many favours, favours to strengthen our position—.’

‘And those of your allies,’ the woman in black interposed.

‘And those of our allies,’ the Black Abbot echoed. ‘No doubt le Leon Blanc is most desirous to again see that which brought about a greater fear than himself. And due my part, for both your valiant efforts and service during the course of the Second War for the Slums, he shall have the Death Knell placed at his disposal.’ ‘There is work to be done.’

Chapter III

Fear

As if some festive occasion was underway, lights shone about every window, their luminescence hindered little by any window dressings. But contrary to the appearance of a lively atmosphere, the movement of bodies and shadows, the reverberations of footfalls, and the conversation of voices told of persons situated only about the ground floor.

Not quite a modern home, the building yet stood of fair improvements over the course of three floors. Repair, replacement, and paint distinguished much of the new from the old; windows, locks, and doors. Whilst the red brick of the walls held to each corner like the ramparts of a fortress. A five-flue chimney stack of old rose at one side, putting on display just two at work.

A steep roof, which might have provided sufficient guard against hands without claws or blades, warned little of its invasion. And even quieter fell the small stones making known the flue with the shortest and easiest route. In silence, the cold of winter settled with the expulsion of every bit of air.

The smell of hot food hung about the entire house. The number of brightly lit lamps made few of the shadows. From the rooms of the second floor, to the main bedroom and hall of the first floor, to the study and living room at the ground floor, adornments of the fanciful sort sat scattered about over the tables and walls, decorations of a higher class amongst otherwise generally modest decor. About a dining room looking much the same, beyond the casual voices of a man, a woman, and a child, three rough yet respectful voices of those working as servants confirmed the number of the household to six.

Clearing away a last bit of soot from his arms and shoulders, Noel unlocked and opened the front door. Nodding to a smile almost buried beneath a veil of grey, he followed after the abbot, melting into the shadows that deepened with the abbot’s announcement of his presence.

‘Do you know what I find most fascinating about a thriving church?’ the Black Abbot asked into the sudden quiet, a musing-like smile upon his face. ‘It’s how by some invisible power, the church seems to bestow some manner of its success upon those in proximity to it, as if to be that support and encouragement towards better things.’ ‘That my own home should have fallen into such a state of disrepair is most unfortunate, but such is the way of time. And honestly, the whole perception is perhaps only an illusion. For indeed, Mr. Gladwyn, we both know full well that it is not St Matthew’s which hath provided you with the means to live as you do. Isn’t that right, sir?’

‘And what has my husband done besides work hard as a hardware store and plumbing supplies merchant, work hard to better the lives of his family?’ the woman of the house retorted.

The Black Abbot gave her the wide and toothy grin of a devil.

‘O the bliss of ignorance.’

‘What is it you want here, abbot?’ Mr. Gladwyn interposed, standing as the three of his staff joined about him in the manner of guards.

‘You know me then?’ the abbot enquired.

‘One could hardly mistake the habit and brazen manner of the villain tearing the order of London asunder.’

‘Villain indeed,’ the abbot laughed, his tone low; ‘and I do suppose that I have taken something of a liberty with this visit. However, I felt our business of the utmost importance.’ ‘Do you mind if we speak alone? I think the matter need not involve any more than is necessary. Wouldn’t you agree, sir?’

Before any answer could be given, Mrs. Gladwyn, dressed as if for a dinner party she did not attend, stood from the table amidst a rush of curls. Her face red, her lips tight, she snatched up a knife from the table and held it forth.

‘You have no business here, you wretched beast! Now be on your way before you find yourself bleeding about the gutter!’

‘My dear, please,’ Mr. Gladwyn insisted, catching hold of his wife’s arm.

‘It appears that she too has heard of me,’ the abbot laughed.

Watching the woman pull away from her husband and advance her threat, the three servants at her back, Noel placed one blow at the base of three skulls and closed on the woman. He tapped her wrist, caught the knife she dropped, and deposited it, along with a lock of her hair, at the table before her child; such extinguished the fire of her rush, changed it to confusion. Guiding her eyes to the table, he watched her breathing accelerate to match the sudden paleness of her husband’s face.

‘So much for tact and discretion,’ the abbot sighed. ‘I already see in your eyes, madam, your questions as to the sort of creaturs who have come to call upon your husband. And I answer: the sort of creaturs who would visit the man considered one of the largest slumlords of Old Nic.’

The woman’s eyes widened further with the loud gasp that escaped from behind her hand. She retreated from the table, her son in tow, before the silent pleas of her husband.

‘Fear not, my dear; all is not lost,’ the abbot continued. ‘Fortunately, despite your husband’s particular status, he is far from the worst of his kind about the East End. And where my associate and I would have dealt with him as severely as others of the like, our dear Georgi and our most benevolent benefactress, the Benefactress, you might say, argued that Mr. Gladwyn and others of the Bethnal Green Vestry, its sanitary committee, and the Board of Guardians of the Poor, might seek to redeem themselves by remedying their properties about Old Nic to clean and liveable conditions of reasonable price for those less fortunate.’ ‘I was told Mr. Gladwyn would not be attending the meeting set for this evening; I came here to persuade him otherwise.’

With the end of the abbot’s words, silence fell over the room. The lowered lights made more dramatic the tightness that those words had placed about Mr. Gladwyn’s face. Grey thickened over the face streaked with tears and the smaller one showing hints of a smile. A bitter cold pinched about the uncomfortable touch of warmth that came with the latter, a touch that persisted to some minute degree. And with that persistence, the darkness of the shadows may have stirred.

‘Having lost considerably less during the war, I realise how that looks before your counterparts, Mr. Gladwyn, how it would look for you to now follow measures meant to aid those you first preyed upon,’ the abbot resumed. ‘However, I beg you to consider—.’

‘Consider what,’ Mr. Gladwyn snapped; ‘the consequences of so—!’

‘There will be consequences regardless of the road you choose,’ the abbot answered, letting his voice go cold. ‘You chose a dangerous walk by night, sir; thus, will your way in continuing forward be a perilous one—one way—or another.’

The abbot stepped nearer to the woman. He placed his hand atop the head of the child she held.

‘But, at least in one direction might your soul find some bit of absolution.’

A veil of grey descended over the man’s face before his hands covered it. But as if to be some manner of consideration, faint ripples of black moved about the entire family.

‘It seems death stares at me from all sides,’ Mr. Gladwyn moaned.

‘Pray, take this as no threat: Death only looks at you from this direction,’ the abbot returned with a short laugh.

Noel met the eyes turned to him and watched the results of the abbot’s work start the glass and silverware about the table. He sensed a stare intensify at his back, sensed it one far from the burning prod of hostility. He heard a slow step made in his direction—and another.

‘Now, Mr. Gladwyn, shall I escort you o’er these few feet to the hall of St. Matthew’s, where, together, we might gain the support of your brethren? Or do I leave here tonight to once again call you my enemy?’

A rustle of clothing told of an arm being lifted; Noel braced himself, restraining the impulse to recoil from the hand that touched his face. Amidst the disturbance to the cold, he heard the abbot chuckle at his back.

‘Is the boy alright?’ the woman enquired, her voice at a whisper.

‘The effort is a constant one, madam.’

The woman nodded deliberately.

‘Mr. Gladwyn will go,’ she answered for her husband; ‘if he knows what’s best for him, he will go now.’

‘Mr. Gladwyn?’ ‘The dizzy one of Parliament, our wonderful Chancellor of the Exchequer, has allied the landed class with the poor and working class against the exploitation of voracious businessmen, as yourself, overly desirous to elevate their status. The Grand Old Man of Parliament and the affluent Miss Georgi argue the hovels run by you and your associates are what hamper their efforts to improve the poor, particularly in the concern of rehabilitating fallen women. The odds have grown against you, sir; and you don’t believe helping those less fortunate than yourself worth the price of yet achieving your own goals if only just a little less quickly?’

‘I’ll go, abbot—I’ll go.’

‘Good,’ the abbot replied.

He tilted his head to the side and glanced back and forth along the ceiling.

‘And as a gesture of goodwill, the church of neutral ground, I would leave the sleepless dragon with your family in place of your indisposed staff.’

‘Well don’t you have an answer for everything,’ Mr. Gladwyn commented, standing from the table, glancing for a moment to his unmoving help, then starting towards a closet.

‘The spoils of war, good sir,’ the abbot returned.

‘Protocol: sentry; close proximity, thus proceed accordingly.’

The shadows almost disappeared, every small sound grew large, every being exuded more of their presence; Noel escorted the abbot and Mr. Gladwyn to the door. Closing it after them, he returned to the dining room, slipping into its darkest corner; the woman had resettled the child to his meal, but hesitated over her own.

‘Are you hungry—young sir?’

‘I am not in need of sustenance, thank you.’

‘And your name?’

‘Would you have me remove your resting servants to their quarters?’

The woman glanced down at them and snorted.

‘If you would, simply leave them on the kitchen floor. I have an idea it’s all their worth.’

Taking note of the woman’s words, Noel gave a short bow; and together, he dragged all three servants to the kitchen. Checking their clothes, he removed knives and truncheons, and tossed them into the fire. In returning to his task, even before the dining room, he felt the piercing blaze of yet another fire; amidst that intrusion, the woman waited aft of an invitation to sit. Acquiescing to protocol, he indulged her and prepared to go about more of the same; she did not pull her hand away so quickly as she had before, and her child beamed as though she had done some great thing.

‘I’ve heard stories of the blackest devil ever to be set free from Hell, the tireless demon set full upon the throat of London, the bane of all order, the courier of fear and death.’

‘Shall I give him your regards? No doubt he will be pleased to know just how far his reputation precedes him.’

The force and focus of her stare unwavering, the woman laughed in moving nearer to her own chair.

‘Without question, your abbot is quite the individual. And I would suppose his design is to evoke the greatest responses of emotions most useful to his work. But you, child, you are something else entirely. I saw and felt the fear that the both of you together brought to the face of my husband and I. Yet, from the moment of your appearance, not for an instant have I sensed anything of the like from my son.’

‘Yet he gave you no indication of the dark side of Mr. Gladwyn?’

The woman nodded.

‘Perhaps you’ll recall any expression my son showed towards, Mr. Gladwyn?’

Through a lightened grey, Noel observed a number of blank looks the child had given the man.

‘Indifference?’

‘His manner was once a deal more hostile,’ the woman sighed. ‘But as I so desired to make a success of my time at Urania, I constantly overlooked my son’s enmity and simply kept him at a distance.’

‘I take it Ms. Georgi was before your time?’

‘No. She would stop by the house every so often when Charles wasn’t about, which, for him, was rather frequent in its last days. And to answer your question, as to why I did not seek advice from either: Charles grew distant, wrapped more and more in his own troubles, while Georgi and I were ever at odds with one another. She didn’t believe women like myself should desire to be married.’

Looking over her white gown of frills and lace, settling a hand about the neck of her son, the woman eased herself back into her own chair, taking with her the bit of agitation she had caused.

‘In the end, I don’t suppose I am much better than my husband,’ she rasped amidst the comforts of her son.

Her shudder showed in spite of the grey about her, upsetting but then drawing near the few traces of black left about the room; Noel closed his eyes to it all, recoiled at what seemed like thunder smashing into the back of them. He breathed with the cold dissipating the shock, blinked against the sudden image of a woman half-clothed in rags, she hanging with the frozen grin of madness upon her face before a young child. The room a whirlwind of grey and black, he pressed himself to stand, to distance himself from the pair, but found his movements hampered. Yet in the fiery pain that came with the restraints, he found a greater sense of focus; and he raged with the swirling darkness, tearing free of the first hold upon him.

In a flash, the room returned to its previous state of quietness. And as if nothing had happened, no evidence remained of the assault, save the fire whose heat subsided beneath the growing cold.

Permitting the bit of sweat about his forehead to be blotted away, Noel lowered his lip down over his teeth and released the furniture caught in his grasp. His brow attended to, he shied from the assistance offered in the direction of his hands.

‘Your courage is to be commended, madam.’

The woman smiled, her bright countenance matching that of her son’s.

‘If he is not afraid, why then should I be?’

Noel nodded and retreated yet again before the woman’s advance. Glancing behind, he saw he had placed himself about a shrinking corner; making her smile wider, the woman stopped.

‘Is it fear—or loathing which keeps you at such a distance?’

Noel lifted a hand, looked it over front to back, flexed it to and from a claw. He stared hard to the woman.

‘As you might have gathered, it is no accident that I am formed in this manner. I am a dangerous and deadly thing, a thing not intended for and ill-suited to the consideration of others.’

The smile faded from the woman’s face as she stepped still closer.

‘Or perhaps it is consideration, kindness—compassion which you require most—.’

Noel again held up his hand; no sound came from the silence, but atop the house, faint touches of at least two presences of cold descended. He reached out still further—nothing more came of the effort. He raised the lights to their initial brightness.

‘There are at least two here, they of a dangerous sort,’ he whispered; ‘but I suspect there may be at least one or two more, and they of the very dangerous sort.’ ‘Sit and eat as you were. If at any time you feel it necessary to retreat, do so towards the kitchen or the nearest corner. Leave the rest to me.’

Managing some imitation of the woman’s smirk, Noel took a knife from the table, twirled it about his fingers, and slipped into the cover of the kitchen. He marked one presence yet about the roof, traced the other to near about the front door. He heard the front door whisper of its opening but offer nothing else of what might have passed over the threshold.

‘Mary Rose, Mary Rose of Gold,’ spoke a voice of velvet from the hall. ‘The respectable Mrs. Mary Rose Gladwyn now, is it?’

With glistening eyes, the woman offered her guest a coy bit of a smile, a creatur returned in full to his gentlemanly form and cool swagger. Her son standing to her side, she wrapped an arm about him and followed the path of the other dragging his finger over and around the table.

‘My congratulations on effecting your escape,’ the former keeper of the fire added, stopping some few feet from the woman.

‘No thanks to you and your kind, of course,’ she returned in a tone of sugar.

Her guest raised his hands about a smile of his own.

‘Hardly do I think we can be faulted for wanting to retain the pleasure of so fine of an asset.’

‘Of course not, creaturs like me are only things to be used for the pleasures and desires of others.’ ‘And what is it you desire, my lord?’

Even with the disarming tone of her words and expression, the knife she reached for might have been a mile away. She winced beneath the grasp about her hand. As it carried her bunched fingers towards her chest and up and inside her collar, she leaned away from the nosing and nibbling about her neck.

‘It seems you and your son have one last job to do, my dear—.’

Slivers of black writhed for a moment longer with the sensations of small tremors; Noel moved in their wake, catching his prey by both neck and hand. He felt tense muscles warn of some movements besides surrender and he flung his captive towards the head chair. The knife redirected from the child, he dodged. The wrist guiding it, he seized. And the hand holding it, he pinned to the table with his own blade.

‘Burns, does it?’ Noel asked towards the teeth bared to their gums, scratching at the old damage at his neck. ‘But I must say, you do not look any the worse for wear since our last encounter—.’

He saw a hint of a smile widen the other’s expression a bit further. The subsequent touch of air short and gentle, he trusted the cold, making certain to emphasise his snarl at having found his own hand pinned next to that of his former captive.

‘Gotten a little cocksure, have we, my young friend,’ a soft voice breathed over a grip of steel; ‘though I suppose betwixt all of us creaturs, you have earned that right, harbinger. You and Benedict have united and made a force of those once mere thorns, made a force of those set against the order of London.’

Watching the first visitor free himself, Noel made his breaths long and deep. He sensed the temperature about the woman like that of a pot ready to boil over.

‘Careful, my dear Mary Rose, you are meant to serve in ransom. Do not make yourself an example less becoming of us.’

The muted sound of silver clattering on the table resounded throughout the tense quiet.

‘And what do you plan to do to him?’

‘It is not for him you should fear, Mary Rose. And so long as he leaves us to carry out our business as planned, he shan’t have to explain any secondary damage.’ ‘So, what is it to be, harbinger?’

The woman’s cooled manner afforded her a step in the direction of her visitors; in that instant, Noel tore his hand from the table, launching himself full into the body of his captor. He felt the reward of a second collision and then a third amidst the shattering of glass. Pulling the knife from his hand, he jabbed it three times into the upper leg of his hissing captor. Rolling free, he caught the arm yet outstretched towards the woman, placing cuts at the wrist, at the elbow, and at the shoulder before depositing his knife into the wall through the wound where the first blade had been removed.

The cold ebbed away, permitting the jolt of pain to serve its purpose; Noel stood, looking from his hand to his antagonists. He matched the daggers set hard against him.

‘I suppose the others are not simply lookouts, but also have some greater part to play concerning certain punitive measures intended for Mr. Gladwyn?’

The silence persisting, Noel nodded. He took a silk handkerchief from the pocket of his former captor and wrapped it about his hand. Then pulling the knife from the wall, he aided